Factoid of the day: Can this be true?
In 2008, “for the first time, consumers spent more time with media they paid for, like books or cable television, than with primarily ad-supported media, like newspapers and magazines.” (Source: NY Times, citing a Veronis Suhler Stevenson report)
Sure – thinking of my own behavior, that’s true. Although I wonder how they distinguish cable tv from magazines? I pay for cable and I pay for magazines. Both have ads between content. Perhaps they’re referring to premium cable channels like HBO, in which case I’d have to say I spend way more time with ad-supported media than not. Hmm – you can ALWAYS make me stop and think.
@ jim —
good point. come to think of it, i pay for (print) newspapers, too. but the papers make their money (or used to make their money) off the ads.
and the report must be talking about premium cable rather than regular cable. but i’d sure pay for an ad-free espn.
i’m surprised that the internet didn’t make the list of media we pay for. statistics seem to bear out that entire generations of people have a constant presence on the internet, which in most cases is going to be paid for. interesting stat.
From my own behavior – it’s true. A newspaper is filled with ads and information that doesn’t interest me. In the end, it’s a lot of trash or a great fire starter that takes up space in my house.
This one got me curious, so I spent some time looking at my own history, and polled a few in house at my office and more and more it rings true, even in this economy. This might be a meaningful shift that tells us honestly (as in from people’s pocketbooks) that the information economy is truly mainstream.
Of course, a lot of the great information on the internet, like the New York Times or almost every source cited by google news, is paid for by advertising in the print version of the media. In addition, some blogs and aggregators are ad supported. And, finally, what people pay for on the internet is usually the pipes (phone company), not the content. So it’s disingenious to say we’re leaving advertising-supported media.
Historically, books, theater and movies were paid for consumers; newspapers, magazines, TV and radio were more or less ad-supported. We can see easily that historically the consumer-supported media has been freer to tackle deep or controversial issues, and is less temporal in its concerns. But does that make it better? If I want to read about the new Porsches, Road & Track magazine is fine, and one way or another their journalists need to be paid.
This just means that the pace of innovation in the advertising sector has slowed down a lot. Consumers afterall want entertainment value from the time they spend on TV and magazines. If a TV show or an article is more interesting than the average ad then consumers will naturally be willing to pay more for them.
In recent times the $$$ allocated to advertising/promotions departments may have reduced (since a company would want to focus on cost cutting) so that explains why most ads coming out of the past few years are not as eyeball-grabbing as consumers expect them to be.